SEPTEMBER OF HIS YEARS: In Alan Furst’s fiction, decent heroes try to navigate their way through heartbreaking choices.

One of the purposes of escapist reading is to feed our daydreams. And for those of us who daydream about being the hero who takes care of the villains, our fantasies usually gravitate to either the brainy (the type of suave, quick-witted fellow who knows his way around an encrypted message, or a wine list) — or the brawny (the kind who says little, takes in everything, and kicks ass with righteous dispatch).

This summer, there are books to appeal to both of those fantasies. It's no accident that two of them take World War II as their setting. Maybe because it offers one of the last examples of what seems like a clear moral choice, World War II has never diminished as a staple of espionage fiction and thrillers.

But not all espionage fiction and popular history has been willing to take that easy black-and-white morality. I haven't seen HBO's The Pacific, but it's significant that one of the sources for the show, Eugene Sledge's memoir With the Old Breed, is a dose of the reality and of the futile barbarism of combat that washes away any Greatest Generation piety.

And Alan Furst, who is probably the current preeminent writer of espionage fiction, made his reputation and his following (at first in England, and then here) with a series of thrillers that destroyed the sentimentality about the communists providing a brave alternative to the fascists. Books like The Polish Officer and Night Soldiers made it clear sometimes that choice was barely a choice at all.

In his last four or five books, Furst's writing has become increasingly elliptical and picaresque. The suspense is still there but the urgency is not. What's left is a form of ruefulness, the attempt of decent heroes to navigate their way through heartbreaking choices, seen as if from a vantage years later. Furst's new Spies of the Balkans might be the "September of My Years" of spy novels. As in the Sinatra song, there is fondness mixed with regret:

She stopped, two steps below him, and said, "No, what I told you at the airfield was the truth — I was in Salonika for something else. Then I met you and what happened, happened." She stayed where she was, and when at last she spoke her voice was barely audible and her eyes were cast down. "I was in love with you."

That's a British agent talking to her former lover, who is also Furst's hero, Costa Zannis, a police officer trying to stay afloat in 1940 Greece. His country is at war with Mussolini, and Greek resistance (or lack of it) to the Nazis in the Balkans will determine the country's next few years. The novel is largely about how Zannis becomes involved with the smuggling of Jews from Berlin through Greece to Turkey.

Strange trips If you want this summer’s eerie subject matter to hit a bit closer to home, or a bit closer to reality, check out Strange Maine: True Tales from the Pine Tree State , by Michelle Souliere (The History Press; $17.99).

Review: The Road John Hillcoat doesn't stray from Cormac McCarthy's Road For those who found the Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men too lighthearted, John Hillcoat's relentlessly faithful version of the author's post-apocalyptic Pulitzer-winning novel might hit the spot.

Pleasure principles Willard Spiegelman seems like a nice guy. He has had the good luck to live a happy life without major disaster or suffering. But as a long-time professor of English at Southern Methodist University and editor of the Southwest Review , he has ended up living his life among just those people — writers and academics.

Tired sleuth Has Walter Mosley gone off crime fiction? With the creation of Easy Rawlins in 1990, Mosley perfected the African-American side of the genre — along with a poetic and insightful take on post-war LA up through the 1960s — in 11 consistently solid books, the most recent coming out in 2007.

Viral bloodsuckers for the summer It might require you to buy a bigger beach tote, but there's no doubt that summer's must-read is Justin Cronin's The Passage , a hulking 766-page epic that traces the genesis and fallout of apocalyptic viral vampirism.

Summer treats From Andean to zydeco, pick your flavor and there's a summer music festival ready to serve it up.

Art in the air conditioning From Picasso to William "Shrek" Steig's cartoons, and surfer photos to a Twilight Zone toy store, New England offers art worth traveling to this summer. Here we round up the best in the region, no matter the weather or your artistic inclinations.

The Big Hurt: This week in brand synergy Uh oh, it appears I don't have anything important to make fun of — I was really counting on a member of Aerosmith's dying right before my deadline or something, but no such luck. Let's mine the press-release pile for some fresh squareness.

Review: Per Petterson plumbs The River of Time Why would Per Petterson — the bestselling Scandinavian writer whose books don't feature an invincible crimefighting heroine — curse the river of time when he is so adept at navigating it?

KATE BEYOND TIME: THE KATE MOSS BOOK | January 08, 2013 Almost all models who achieve some degree of fame find themselves blamed for whatever agenda their era's most vocal scold happens to be pushing.

INTERVIEW: NINA HOSS ON BARBARA | December 18, 2012 Quietly over the last 11 years, one of the strongest collaborations in contemporary cinema has been developing between the German director Christian Petzold and the actress he often chooses to star in his films, Nina Hoss. Petzold and Hoss's latest collaboration, Barbara , is their richest and finest film.

SLIDESHOW: THE CHEAP NEAR-THRILLS OF SEXYTIME | December 14, 2012 With porn so privately accessible now, we don't worry about the stigma attached to its consumption, the thought of someone pausing to peruse the art in front of an adult movie theater (hell, the thought of an adult movie theater) instead of just ducking in before being seen is almost touching.

BUNNY YEAGER’S NAKED AMBITION | October 05, 2012 Pin-up photography has served so many purposes — outlet for male desire; outlet for feminist ire; retro kitsch emblem — that it has barely been talked about as photography.